My hands have never been so clean.
When all this began I tackled the constant hand washing with gusto, playfully singing along with Springsteen's “Prove It All Night” ("I've been working real hard trying to get my hands clean..."). But six weeks later it seems like those were the days of innocence. Now I wash my hands grudgingly, sick of the constant ritual and wondering when it will ever end.
At least I work from home. I can thank a woman named Ann Butler for this. She was my English teacher back at Notre Dame HS in Riverside, and the first person who ever suggested that I should be a writer. It helped that Mrs. Butler was smart, witty, and extremely attractive. I think she was a closet smoker, which kind of gave her a rebellious vibe to my altar boy way of thinking. One assignment was that we keep a journal and turn it in on a regular basis. I know that some in our class wrote just a sentence or two per day. But for me, given the first chance in my life to truly express my feelings, that assignment was a lighthouse. I filled page after page, keeping it hidden from my parents because I didn't want them to know what was going on inside my soul for fear of criticism or humiliation, but eagerly handing it in to Mrs. Butler every week. I wrote about girls, Cheap Trick, and where I should go to college — and a whole lot about being lost and afraid about what the future would bring.
She always wrote comments in the margins about the quality of the work or some crisis I was trying to figure out. I basked in her words and wish I still possessed that journal today. But I burned it at the end of my senior year out of fear that it would be discovered. The only takeaway was the day that Mrs. Butler suggested I should think of becoming a writer. To a kid whose life seemed already structured and planned for him in most conservative fashion by others, with absolutely no hope of deviation, those words were a voice from the underground, a whisper of the unthinkable. So I reveled in the notion but pushed it down like a forbidden thought, only to have that single sentence about becoming a writer nag at me and call to me until it became impossible to ignore.
So here I am, literally forty years later, sheltering at home. The highlight of my days are moments like seeing RSM's Mayor McGirr, with whom I coached Little League, in his mask at Target. Or heading to Selma's for a growler pour, just in the name of getting out of the house. Or taking Django to the dog park, a task I once did reluctantly but now consider the most Zen experience imaginable. But mostly I write. I walk the thirty steps to my garage office, close the door and seal myself off from the world. I am home, in every sense of the word. I feel safe and secure putting words on the page, like there is no virus. I miss coaching my track team each afternoon, with the emotional highs and lows and validation from creating champions. I can only hope that in all the years of doing that I might have changed a life — just like mine was forever altered by a single compliment from a hot English teacher.
Thank you, Mrs. Butler. Stay safe.